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The 4th
of February 1994 was a grim, cold and foggy day when our coach
reached the small unassuming
town of Chillianwala in rural Punjab, about 200 kilometers from
Islamabad. The purpose of our visit,
organized by the
Asian Study Group and comprising foreigners and Pakistanis, was to see a place whose sole claim to fame was an
event which had occured there almost a century and a half earlier, in
January 1849, and which caused ripples in the British Empire:
 Chillianwala
was the scene of the one of the biggest battles ever fought by
Europeans on the Indian Subcontinent. It was a battle which pitted
the British East India Company against powerful Sikh adversaries
during the
Second
Anglo-Sikh War (1848-49) and which resulted in the deaths and injuries of
thousands of combatants. More than 600 British officers and soldiers
reportedly died at
Chillianwala and their remains lie entombed
in its war cemetary which, luckily, still stands to this day and was
the highlight of our visit. Stories of great personal
courage, of desperate infantry advances and cavalry charges in the
face of heavy canon fire, and military
incompetence, are associated with the
Battle of Chillianwala. Both
the British and the Sikhs, who ruled over Punjab at the time,
claimed victory, though technically the battle was a stalemate.
One month later, at the battle of Gujrat, the British
army decisively defeated the Sikhs, resulting in the subsequent
annexation of Punjab by the British Empire. A detailed account of
the battle of Chillianwala, considered to be among the most
important fought by the British in India, can be found
here. There
is a Chillianwala monument at the Royal Chelsea Hospital in London. |
